Putin Says U.S. Pressured European Watchdog to Withdraw from Russian Election

November 27, 2007 04:33 PM

by
findingDulcinea Staff

The election-monitoring arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) says its visa applications were denied; the Kremlin's critics cite this incident as the latest step on Russia's path away from democracy.

On Nov. 16, the OSCE announced that it will boycott the Dec. 2 Russian parliamentary election because of Moscow's obstructiveness.

The Kremlin rejected the OSCE accusation, and on Nov. 26 President Vladimir Putin upped the ante by saying that the organization had acted “at the recommendation of the U.S. State Department.”

In a related development, Russian English-language newspaper The Moscow Times reported that unnamed election officials alleged that the government issued instructions to polling officers that Putin’s party, United Russia, must receive double the number of votes it is expected to win this Sunday. How that would be achieved was, say the officials, not explicitly stated.

The results of the parliamentary elections will in part determine what happens in the presidential vote next year, when Putin will have to stand down at the end of his second consecutive term.

The Russian leader has already expressed interest in the role of prime minister. Many have conjectured that he is positioning himself to resume the presidency when he can run again in 2012.

Although Putin’s stratagems are broadly derided in the West, they cause little protest among his compatriots. According to The Guardian, a September poll found that 64 percent of Russians would re-elect the president were he able to run next year.

The International Herald Tribune covered Putin’s talk of U.S. meddling in the coming election on Nov. 26. Putin is quoted as saying, “According to information we have, [the OSCE withdrew] at the recommendation of the U.S. State Department and we will take this into account in our inter-state relations with this country. Their goal is the delegitimization of the elections. But they will not achieve even this goal.”

On Nov. 26, 2007, the The Moscow Times, a Russian English-language publication, stated that “election officials have been ordered to make sure that United Russia collected double the number of votes it is expected to win in State Duma elections on Sunday—even if they have to falsify the results, a senior election official said.” United Russia is Vladimir Putin’s party, and the Central Election Committee reportedly denied the allegation. Apparently, an unnamed official also talked of ballot-stuffing in previous elections. “We would do it in front of foreign observers,” said the official, “because they didn’t understand anything of what was going on.”

The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on Nov. 26 that the U.S. State Department denied that it had compelled the OSCE to “refuse” to monitor the Russian parliamentary elections on Sunday, Dec. 2.

Putin’s accusation that the White House exerted pressure on the OSCE to withdraw its election monitors follows an earlier, related statement from the chairman of Russia’s Central Election Commission, Vladmir Churov. On Nov. 19, Churov claimed that the OSCE decision not to observe the electoral process in Russia was politically motivated. He also insisted that the absence of the OSCE would have “absolutely no impact.” Churov said, “In a sovereign country, the legitimacy [of elections] is defined by the people.”

Opposition party The Other Russia has drawn international attention on account of its leader being Gary Kasparov, the former chess champion. His party was been barred from the coming parliamentary election, and on Nov. 24 Kasparov was arrested while taking part in a Moscow rally. At the time of his arrest, Kasparov was trying to deliver a letter of complaint to the Russian election commission. He was sentenced to five days in prison.

The Russian constitution does not allow a president to serve more than two consecutive terms, and Putin’s second is drawing to a close. There has been much speculation that Putin will find some way to stay in power, and in October this year he stated that the prospect of his becoming prime minister in 2008 is “entirely realistic.” With a close ally as president, Putin would then, according to The Guardian, be well positioned to resume the presidency in the 2012 election. A September poll found that 64 percent of Russians would vote for Putin next year if they were able to.

ODIHR is the election-monitoring arm of the OSCE and has been observing Russian elections since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The ODIHR reports are available online, going back to the 1996 presidential election.

In summation, the OSCE said of the last parliamentary elections held in Russia, in 2003, that they left “serious concerns regarding the lack of media independence. State media failed to provide balanced coverage of the campaign and considerable pressure was exerted on journalists, which restricted information available to voters to make an informed choice. Steps should be taken to develop the state broadcasters into a truly independent public service.” The full report is available online from the OSCE.

British newspaper The Guardian has produced a Q&A on the Dec. 2 parliamentary election. One of the subjects covered is the claims of the Kremlin’s critics that United Russia has changed the election rules this year to penalize the opposition parties.

The results of a poll conducted by the EU-Russia Center in Brussels, published in February this year, found that 75 percent of Russians believe that their country “is a Eurasian state with its own path of development,” and only 10 percent think it “part of the West, with a vocation to move closer to Europe and the United States.” Asked whether they would like a return to a Soviet system, 35 percent said yes.

British journalist Edward Pearce writes in The Guardian that the West is wrong to demonize the Russian president’s curtailment of what outsiders view as democratic norms. Russians want stability more than anything, states Pearce, and in Putin “they are getting what they want and they want it because Putin has governed Russia for Russia and Russians, has put self-respect in a country whose nadir reflected an American zenith.”

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in 1952 in Leningrad. For almost two decades, he worked in the KGB, and was elected president of the Russian Federation in 1999. He is now serving his second term as president.

The International News Safety Institute published a report in March 2007 titled "Killing the Messenger," looking at violence against journalists between 1996 and 2006. The institute's findings showed that Russia is the second most dangerous country in the world after Iraq.

In 2006, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists published a report stating that, of the 13 Russian journalists murdered since Putin came to power, only three cases resulted in arrests and trials.